Shelley Fralic
Sun
The power of television, whether to captivate, provoke or simply entertain, is irrefutable.
It can transform the interesting into the dull, the pedestrian into the fascinating, and the tyro into the torch-bearer.
Reality shows, for instance, create household names out of the truly untalented. Witness Kim Kardashian.
News commentators, society’s arbiters, can make or break an ego. Just ask Sarah Palin.
And specialty cable channels, proliferating like bunnies during Passover, have created a seemingly unquenchable appetite for what can only be dubbed the new porn, parading not the flesh of humans but the tantalizing promise of the behind-the-scenes shenanigans of the ordinary, be they parents of 18 kids, foul-mouthed British chefs or tattooed bad boys who build motorcycles.
Nowhere is this modern-day porn more addictive than on the home front.
It would be easy to blame paint-chip maven Debbie Travis and her Montreal-based production company, Whalley-Abbey Media, for our newfound craving, having first tempted our taste buds, way back when, with her popular Painted House series.
Travis has since dominated the home and garden TV landscape, with shows like Facelift, From The Ground Up, Buy Me, Property Shop and Income Property, an impressive lineup complemented by dozens of other shows drawing huge audiences all over the dial, shows like Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, Mansions, This Old House, Home Heist, Flip this House, Moving Up, Pure Design, Sarah’s House, My First Home, Property Ladder, Trading Spaces, Dream Home and House Hunters.
Not only do we seem to care deeply about what’s going on inside a stranger’s house — be it restoring or renovating, decorating or designing — we clearly care just as much about the transaction that got us there.
No surprise, really, especially not in Canada, where a big-city house can cost as much as a small jet.
And so we have made reality stars of Brad Lamb, the big, bald, blustery Toronto realtor in Big City Broker.
And of Tatiana Londono, all huge hair and ambition, in The Property Shop, and Sandra Rinomato, seasoned and reasoned, in Property Virgins, and the charmingly patient Sofie Allsopp of The Unsellables.
They are peddling the Canadian dream, home ownership, and we can’t take our eyes off them.
Enter Sally Cook.
She is one of eight Toronto realtors (all but one are women) on a new W Network show called The Agents, which premieres April 27.
The show, she says, though not really sure what it means either, is a “docu-soap,” because “it’s not about the home, it’s not about the buyer.”
Instead, it’s about working real estate agents in Toronto, and each episode profiles two — one rookie and one pro — as they deal with the roller-coaster housing market, antsy clients, and their busy personal lives.
The first episode features Janice Rushford, a 36-year-old rookie with big hair and blue jeans who is selling a house left in an estate while juggling a new relationship (with her boss!) and single motherhood.
The pro is Cook, trim and polished at 55, a mother and grandmother and transplanted Brit who works with her realtor husband, Tom.
Cook, a long-time mortgage broker, decided to get her real estate licence when, during the 1980s boom, “I saw so many people get hurt by, I hate to say it, unscrupulous agents.”
In episode one, filmed a year ago, Cook is looking for a condo for a client while overseeing the construction of her 4,000-square-foot lakeside vacation home.
So what’s the show’s attraction?
“I asked the same question,” says Cook. “Why would you want to do a show about real agents? They said: ‘It’s a lot of people’s dream job.’ “
Maybe, but Cook says she’s appalled by some real estate shows, like the Los-Angeles based Million-Dollar Listing, which focus on the glitz and glamour and the young guns of the trade, when, in fact, there are both lean times and immense disappointments in the industry.
“There is a massive failure in this business, and to be successful you have to find a balance.
“I think we’re the average agents doing the average job in an average life in a big city.
“People think when you get into real estate, it’s going to be big bucks and no work. So this is their insight. It’s hard work.”
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